Skift Take

It is indeed good times to be doing an online travel booking IPO in Europe. First EDreams Odigeo, now Bravofly, is Skyscanner coming on to the market next?

— Rafat Ali

Bravofly Rumbo Group, a Swiss online-travel agency, plans to sell shares in an initial public offering in Zurich that may raise as much as 300 million francs ($340 million).

As many as 2.63 million new shares and 3.15 million existing shares will be offered at 40 francs to 52 francs apiece, Chiasso-based Bravofly said in a statement today. That will give the company a market capitalization of as much as 750 million francs before an overallotment option of as many as 577,000 shares if demand is high enough, it said. Bravofly has fixed the gross proceeds from new shares at 105 million francs.

The share sale of Chiasso, Switzerland-based Bravofly, whose holders include the Agnelli family and Ardian, the private-equity firm formerly known as AXA Private Equity, comes amid a consolidation of Europe’s travel websites. EDreams Odigeo, the continent’s largest online travel agency formed from the merger of three companies, plans to raise as much as 420 million euros in an initial public offering, valuing the company at as much as 1.2 billion euros.

The first trading day on the SIX Swiss Exchange will be April 16, and investors can subscribe to the sale from tomorrow to April 15, Chief Executive Officer Francesco Signoretti told reporters in Zurich today.

Depending on the final price and number of shares sold, between 35.9 percent and 40.8 percent of the company will be offered to the public, Bravofly said. The final price will be announced on April 16.

IPO Boom

“We did two acquisitions in the last two years, so we want to boost this process and raising capital will help us,” Signoretti also said. While Bravofly may pay a dividend in 2015 — depending on how much cash it has after possible purchases — no payment is planned in 2014, the company said.

The 49 percent stake held by Bravofly founders Marco Corradino and Chairman Fabio Cannavale will drop to about 34 percent after the offering, Cannavale said at the Zurich briefing.

Companies in Europe have raised about $16 billion in IPOs this year, more than triple what they sold in the first quarter of 2013 as investors return to the region’s markets on the strength of an economic recovery, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Bravofly’s website is used to book and compare flights, cruises, hotels and rental cars. European online bookings could rise 9.2 percent this year to $117.2 billion compared to an increase of 7.7 percent in 2013, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. wrote in a report last month.

With assistance from Ruth David in London. To contact the reporters on this story: Jan-Henrik Foerster in Zurich at jforster20@bloomberg.net; Carolyn Bandel in Zurich at cbandel@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mariajose Vera at mvera1@bloomberg.net Zoe Schneeweiss, Aaron Kirchfeld.